Cain accuser got $45,000

POLITICO has learned that one of the women who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s received a payout of about $45,000 as part of her settlement — significantly more than the two or three months’ salary Cain initially recalled the woman obtained.

The woman who received the approximately $45,000 is the staffer who Cain has acknowledged formally lodged a complaint about his behavior.

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Cain described her in a Fox News interview as a writer in the communications department.

The compensation the woman received as part of her departure package was far more than that what a midlevel trade association employee in the late 1990s would have made over a two-to-three month period.

It was also more than the payout a second association employee received after complaining about Cain’s behavior. According to The New York Times, the second woman received $35,000 — a year’s pay.

Cain’s changing stories about whether settlements existed, and their amounts, have muddled his explanations. He has not acknowledged that there is more than one settlement.

On Monday morning, Cain told Fox News, “If the restaurant [association] did a settlement, I was unaware of it.”

Speaking midday Monday at The National Press Club, Cain continued to plead ignorance: “As far as a settlement, I am unaware of any kind of settlement. I hope it wasn’t for much, because I didn’t do anything. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not aware of a settlement that came out of that accusation.”

Then, in a Fox interview taped Monday afternoon, Cain conceded that there was a settlement.

“It might have been two months [salary]. I don’t remember the exact number, but I do remember my general counsel saying, ‘The good news is, we didn’t pay all of this money that was being demanded,” the former association CEO told Greta Van Susteren, claiming the woman’s charges were “baseless.”

At another point in the interview, Cain said of the payout: “Maybe three months’ salary or something like that, just vaguely trying to recall it.”

But on Tuesday morning, he shifted his answer again, suggesting that the terms of the payout could have been larger.

On CNN’s Headline News, he said: “The one I remember and am aware of and was a financial settlement and it was somewhere in the vicinity of three to six months’ severance pay, something of that nature.”